The Jesus Pirates

Proof that religious education may be somewhat lost on kindergarteners. I thought the skull and crossbones was an especially nice touch.

The Owen Show

Several readers have inquired as to how my big trombone performance at the kindergarten class went last month, so I am updating you all.

Keep in mind that while my blog entry was about me, I was not the only act on the bill that day. In fact, if there were a concert poster made up for the event, it would have gone something like this:

"OWENFEST '09!!!
Opening Acts:
"Owen's Twin Bros." - Living, Breathing Show and Tell Items
"Star Wars medley" - played by Owen's Daddy on Trombone, followed by short Q & A
"Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt" - a dramatic reading of Owen's favorite book by Owen's Daddy

Headliner:

"Flags!" - an educational presentation by Owen, the Star of the Week"

So, first we introduced the twins, who proved to be an exceptional warm up act. I suppose for extra effect, we could have told the class that we had octuplets and only had room for two in the van, as kindergartners are notoriously gullible. But really, two is enough. Twins make people smile, especially when they are being cute and not either whining or wreaking havoc and destruction.

Next, I broke out the trombone. No chance to warm up as there was no "green room" and I was self-conscious about noise as a lone trombone blaring out through the relatively quiet grade school was sure to garner more attention than I wanted. So, I dived right in. The song went well, with the exception of one clinker high note early on which caused an audible cringe from the crowd. The kids asked me a lot of questions afterwards and Owen told Deanna later that a lot of the kids thought he had a cool dad. So, having earned the adulation of such a discerning crowd, what more could I really ask for. No encore was demanded, by the way.

Next up, I read the class Owen's "favorite" book, "Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt!" which proved to be more violent than I recalled, so I ended up skipping a lot of pages when I saw teacher Mindy sort of grimacing at me. You know you are not reading a classic when you can skip approximately every other page and not have anyone lose the narrative thread (such as it is) or care. The class was not enthralled.

Last, Owen did a little presentation on flags using his extensive collection of miniature flags as props. While devoted readers of CloudEight are familiar with his love of flags, his peers were not. I like to think he wowed them with his ability to identify the flags of obscure countries like Trinidad and Tobago, but who really knows what impresses the kindergarten set. I can say that he was poised and we, his parents, were duly impressed and proud.

In case you are wondering where Deanna was during all this, she was "on twins" after their portion of the show - i.e. keeping them from grabbing the slide of my trombone while I was playing, etc. A difficult job, to be sure. It was actually a bit of a trick prying the twins out of there as they were rather enthralled with being in school at long last. Hayden in particular attempted to dash into several other classrooms on our way out, but we managed to corral him in time.

And that, dear readers, was the extent of the Owen Show. DVD's of the show and my reading of "Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt!!" in audio book format are of course available for download in the "ShopCloudEight!" portion of this blog. Buy both together and receive a discount.

Paddy O'Daddy

Another St. Patrick's Day is in the books. Aside from guzzling Shamrock Shakes and amusing myself by speaking in an Irish brogue and making the kids refer to me as "Paddy O'Daddy" and "Da", not too much celebratin' took place. Deanna and I hope to rectify that in the near future with a kid-free jaunt to New Orleans, where we will celebrate being in New Orleans without kids.

Another birthday in the books recently for me as well. From the things that make me feel old file:

1. I recently had to ask the bartender at a Wicker Park bar what the kids are drinking with the Red Bull these days. Vodka, as it turns out. Still, I guess I should get some style points for being in a Wicker Park bar at all, even if I needed Red Bull to stay out past 10.

2. The twins like to run their hands over my unshaven weekend face and say "rrrrooouuugh!" Then, to reinforce their point, they run their hands over my bald head and say "smooooooove."

Owen-Wan Kenobi's Last Home Birthday Party

Every other family in town sagely seems to host 6th birthday parties at an indoor playground, pool, gymnasium, etc. We, however, for the second year in a row, let Owen talk us into hosting his birthday party at our house. We are apparently slow learners.

As soon as we consented to Owen's request for a Star Wars themed party at our place, he began suggesting that we decorate each room of the house as a different planet in the Star Wars galaxy, including an ambitious request to turn the living room into the lava-covered planet from Episode III, and the dining room into the ice planet of Hoth from the Empire Strikes Back. Yikes!

We eventually scaled back his plans to something workable, and worked out a guest list of seven of his little friends. An expensive but fun trip to the party megastore followed, along with some long days of agonizing over a cake design by Deanna (the final decision: an unappetizing looking but tasty Jabba the Hutt, using, amusingly, an Easter lamb cake mold as its base foundation), and research regarding Star Wars party games by me. Finally, after some serious night-before decorating, we were ready to rock.

Entertaining eight six-year-olds for two hours is not a pleasant task under any circumstances. Still, despite dreading it for days, I think Deanna and I can both agree that it was actually worse than we imagined. While things generally hung together for the first five minutes or so, the situation started to deteriorate when they spread out to multiple floors, despite our best efforts to corral them. Then, at the outset of the first game, one kid, who we didn't much know and who seemed a bit out-of-sync with the others, simply disappeared. Once Deanna reported to me that she couldn't find him, we took turns quietly scouring the house for him while the other gamely attempted to hold the rest of the group's attention. Increasingly desperate, we learned later that we had both independently gone out to the mudroom and counted the kids shoes and coats - all there. Finally, convinced that he must have left I began searching outside, stunned that we could lose one of our eight charges just 10 minutes into the party. Deanna was just looking up his mom's number to call and say we couldn't find him - not a pleasant call to make - when she saw a shadow move behind a chair. The little bastard actually smirked as he acknowledged to Deanna that yes, he had heard us all calling for him - just didn't feel like coming out.

While the rest of the party was fairly unpleasant as well - fist fight, verbal altercations, crying, running out of games after the first hour - it all actually seemed delightful compared to our panic of thinking we had lost one of our guests.

While we may have had a tough go of it, the kids all actually seemed to have a blast, including making a giant space-themed mural, which, amusingly, including poorly spelled versions of risque six-year old terms like "fartsicle" and "poopy-head." The highlight for me was some Jedi-sensory training that consisted of having the kids stick their hands into cups to feel various things they couldn't see and then telling them they were gross things like "Darth Maul's eyeballs" (mandarin oranges) and "Bantha guts" (spaghetti). I knew this was a success when one of the kids told me later, upon finding out it had been mandarin oranges and not eyeballs, that he had been wondering how we gotten our hands on Darth Maul's eyeballs.

I will leave you with this photo of Deanna, attempting, to no avail, to summon Obi-Wan to help us watch the kids.

RedPlanet Live!

Owen is "Star of the Week" in his kindergarten class this week. Among the dubious benefits afforded to the Star of the Week is the chance to have your parents come into the class and embarrass themselves. While I could take the easy way out and simply read Owen's favorite book to the class (a charming little tome called "Watch Out for Jabba the Hutt!"), I have decided to immerse myself fully in the opportunity to embarrass myself by playing the Star Wars theme on the trombone. While I was pretty good in my high school heyday, I then took a 15-year hiatus. I took it up again for a couple of years some time ago when I joined an all-lawyers big band, which practiced every Monday night in the courtroom of a saxophone-playing federal judge in Chicago. We would play formally at our own concerts a couple of times a year, play at lunch outside in Daley plaza, and, increasingly, play at charity dance events and the like. Despite being made up of people who worked full time in the legal profession, they were, for the most part, pretty damn good. I was, however, less good. They got increasingly serious and played more and more about the time Owen was born and I decided to hang it up again. So, six more years on, tomorrow marks my auspicious return to public performing.

Nothing eases any concerns about performing after a six year layoff, however, like playing a song beloved by kindergarten boys who, I would guess, have no idea what a trombone is supposed to sound like. It reminds me of the easing in done by my first high school rock band. At the time we were called "Andromeda," later to be changed to "Circus" and then, alarmingly, "Drauma" - yes, with a "u", for reasons I can thankfully no longer recall. I played electric bass and occasionally sang (although I was never able to do both at the same time, a fact that a year later made me expendable and got me and my rock star attitude booted out of a different band, "The Wave," mere weeks before they went on to win my high school's Battle of the Bands). Anyway, Andromeda's first paying gig was playing a Christmas party for kids with mental disabilities. At the time, we knew about 9 songs, 5 or so of which were Judas Priest songs. Although it sounds like an unlikely recipe for success, I don't believe I have ever played for a more appreciative audience in my life. No matter how much a song sucked, they loved it, clamoring for more. Even after I blew out the speakers on our borrowed sound system with my trademark scream at the end of REO Speedwagon's "Ridin the Storm Out", they were loving us as we soldiered on with some acoustic Christmas carols that I am sure were almost unrecognizable.

So, here's hoping the kindergarten kids like my little performance tomorrow even half as much as the kids back then. Tomorrow's possible encore, in case you are wondering, is "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas, not Judas Priests' "Heading Out to the Highway." Signs of the time, I suppose.

2009 POTY Update No. 1: Deanna Squelches the Competition

A couple of nights ago, Deanna performed the Heimlich maneuver on Cooper, quite possibly saving his life. She is one cool chick under pressure, I tell you! Vegas bookmakers immediately dropped the odds on her winning the 2009 POTY award down to even money. Those of you smart enough to put money down on her in January back when the odds were still at 3:2 can give yourself a little pat on the back - or contact Deanna if you need more of a hearty whack or a fist to the diaphragm.

POTY Time

I have received several inquiries from readers as to the outcome of the race on CloudEight for the coveted Parent of the Year (POTY) award, timely reminders that it is high time for our annual award ceremony. For newer readers, the POTY is an award bestowed each year in our house since we embarked on our childrearing adventures. For those of you keeping score at home, Deanna has won three of the previous five contests (with the help, I might add, of an “automatic” victory rule for the two years she actually gave birth – a rule I wisely never choose to argue with). I was able to bring home the hardware in 2004 and last year, in a surprise win, the award went to Suzy the nanny. Returning to the winner’s circle this year, for the fourth time in six years, is none other than our very own Deanna. The trophy this year, for those who are curious, is a model of a puking child fashioned from scraps of old soap.

While I was solid throughout the year, Deanna was, in a word (or non-word, depending on how hung up on proper grammar and English you are), solider. She also had some game-changing moments. Long-concerned about the twins’ nighttime reliance on pacifiers, for example, she decided one summer weekend that we needed to suck it up (pun-intended) and make them go cold poult. It worked, and their lips have not graced rubber since (random chewing on hot wheels tires notwithstanding). And, frankly, it wasn’t even the weekend long hysterical-cry-fest I had anticipated and dreaded.

A more telling example occurred in mid-summer: Owen was in the middle of a four week run of every day swim lessons when he was unexpectedly promoted from Level 1 (populated by those at risk of drowning in a ½ inch-deep puddle) to Level 2 (populated by those with a 50% chance of survival if tossed into two feet of water despite being almost four feet tall). He was upset at leaving his beloved teacher, Ms. Colleen, as well as his little compatriots down at the shallow end, and being made to engage in life-risking behaviors such as putting his face in the water. There was crying and uncooperative behavior.

The next day found him back at Level 1. His grandparents, who had dropped him off, witnessed some disturbing behavior during the lesson: a fairly obvious lack of effort in an attempt to stay at the relative safety of Level 1 (I was working on some good swimming stuff here using “dog(paddl)ing it” and “throwing in the towel” but have given up and am moving on). That night, Deanna and I, advised of this behavior, sat him down for a little heart to heart. Before I could even start, Deanna launched into a firm, persistent but caring monologue to him about our expectations of him and the fact that a lack of effort was unacceptable. Those words don’t due it justice really - she had just the right touch and you could see the lesson seeping into what sometimes seems like the impenetrable skull of our little five-year-old. It was just a damn fine bit of parenting, the likes of which one doesn’t see every day. I sat by amazed and largely silent (other than the occasional shout of “Amen” following particular good turns of phrase). Damned if he didn’t go out and nail the “Swimmer of the Day” award at class the very next day. And, as summer wound its way on, his swimming progressed by l(e)aps and bounds. Simply brilliant.

So how does one compete with masterful parenting flourishes like that? There were really only two chances for me at that point. One was to single-handedly potty-train the twins. While I did actually focus on this for awhile, they seemed only vaguely interested, and in the end they simply weren’t ready.

The second was for Deanna to falter - to fall off the beam, to put it into Olympic terms in what was an Olympic year – but who wants to win like that in a parenting competition. While Deanna generously tried to give me a fighting chance by dropping Cooper on his head several days before the end of the year, a fact appreciated by me if not by Cooper, it was simply too little, too late.

So, while our annual POTY competition here on CloudEight is fierce, and the kids always willing to present new and exciting challenges to our parenting abilities, I, for one, am proud to be co-parenting with our household's four-time champion. Winter hats off to you, Sunny D! And now, on to this years competition...

Hot Time in Chicago - That Toddler Town

Deanna and Owen are thawing out in Florida for a few days with her parents, leaving the twins and I to fend for ourselves in this subzero meat locker of a city we call home.

While others may have seen this as unfair or depressing, the twins saw it simply as an opportunity to host that all night "Go Fish" party and tournament they are always scheming to have but that Deanna would never let them do, what with their 8 p.m. bedtimes and all. I can be a bit of a soft touch, and soon enough on Saturday afternoon both boys were making some calls to their little friends on their plastic Mickey Mouse cellphones and sending text messages that to me all looked like "psihPPP7&^$plmmmmm," but which is apparently toddler for "game on" as it was not long before a rowdy bunch of two-somethings was gathered in the basement. The buy-in was sixteen cheerios, a wheel from a hot wheels car, and "something shiny." Beverages of choice were non-alcoholic jello shots and whole milk shooters.

A couple of hours in, hunger descended on the crowd, the plastic cellphones came out again, and next thing I knew, a delivery guy was at the door with the entire contents of the kids menu from the local Mexican place. Not too much later, a fight broke out - there was pushing and nonsensical yelling ("Bubblebutt!" "Bad boy!" "No you bad boy!") - followed by all of the participants and non-participants converging on me for a mass tattle. Having dispensed some of my judge-like justice in the form of timeouts for the main offenders, I returned upstairs to find some female toddlers had arrived - those damn plastic cellphones again, how the hell were they doing this?!? As the responsible parent present, I was initially concerned that a game of strip "Old Maid" might be in the offing, but was comforted by the fact that none of the attendees possessed the manually dexterity to actually remove all of their own clothes.

Instead, it turned into a crazy toddler rave, with some three year old kid wearing sunglasses spinning Ralph's World and Dan Zanes tunes until the pacifier-sucking crowd on the floor was worked up into a well-past-bedtime frenzy. The endless loop of Baby Einstein, Teletubbies and BooBah videos running on the large screen TV in the background lent the scene a surreal quality. As the only adult present, I was for all intents and purposes the bathroom as well, as most of our guests were not potty-trained. The line for diaper changes snaked around the corner into the hallway at times and there was loud complaining when we ran out of wipes. From there, the evening could only go one place: karaoke. Let me just say you haven't lived until you have heard a band of tone-deaf, sugared-up two-year-olds massacre the lyrics to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and the Alphabet Song at 10:00 p.m. on a crazy Saturday night.

With the crowd collapsed into fits of giggles, I knew it was time to send everyone packing. I made a round of calls to what turned out to be largely surprised parents who had assumed their little bundles of joy were tucked safely in their cribs. By 11 p.m. - the toddler definition of staying up all nite by the way - I had cleared the house of all but my two little troublemakers. After confiscating the plastic phones - as well as the plastic keys to their Step 2 foot-powered cars, just to be on the safe side - it was off to bed for all of us.

Twenty four hours later, most of it spent cleaning up - I swear I will be finding half-filled sippy cups of congealed milk until Spring - I am still exhausted and just now finally able to muster the energy to write this.

Holiday Leftovers

Hope everyone had great holidays. Here are six snapshots of life on CloudEight in the weeks since I last posted. Cheers!

On Christmas morning, while waiting for the twins to wake up before going downstairs, Owen was excitedly reciting to Deanna and me a litany of items he expected to find that Santa had brought. Having spoken to Santa only hours earlier, I had some inside knowledge and was somewhat alarmed that Owen’s expectations far–exceeded what Santa had actually deposited downstairs. In an effort to manage the situation, I explained to Owen that it had been my experience as a child that Santa usually only brought one or two of the things I had asked for. Owen mulled this over for a moment, looked at me sympathetically and said “That’s too bad for you” before continuing on with his expansive list.

We have a crèche Advent Calendar - a magnetic manger scene that is empty on November 30 but gradually fills up during December as each day, another magnetic member of the manger scene is taken out of the numbered boxes surrounding the scene and added to the manger. Owen was super-excited about this from Day 1, although it probably seems to a kid in those interminable waiting weeks before Christmas that almost every box opened on the 1st through 18th is either a star or a sheep, with only the occasional shepard, cow or inn-keeper to break the monotony. Finally, in the last crazy pre-Christmas week, the big stars of the show like kings, Mary, Joseph, etc. finally appear in the mix. By December 23, the scene was complete except for Jesus, causing Owen to leap out of bed on Christmas Eve morning with the cheerily urgent statement: “I need to get Jesus out of his box."

Cooper sneezed in the car the other day, causing a flood of snot to accumulate on his upper lip. Owen watched Cooper using his tongue to lick off the snot and casually remarked: “Cooper is using my old trick.” Cooper enthusiastically disagreed, as did Hayden, leading to a spirited argument among the three as to who had actually originated the snot lip-licking trick. To accurately picture this scene, you should know that the twins debating skills are a bit rough yet, consisting mostly of loudly and frequently repeated shouted statements like "No, not you" accompanied by an emphatic arm gesture. Deanna’s frustrated contribution of “Do any of you actually believe you are the first kid to lick snot off of his lip?” only served to raise the intensity and volume level of the debate. Such, sadly, is the level of discourse in our house of small boys these days.

The most frequently heard Christmas greeting around our house this year was, of course, “Happy Birthday.” Sadly, the boys were not wishing Jesus a happy birthday, but instead took the line from Frosty, who enthusiastically and emphatically wishes himself a happy birthday each time the magic hat is placed on his head, causing him to come to life. An early season viewing and a couple of subsequent repeats of this holiday “classic” caused the twins to happily yell “Happy Birthday” periodically throughout the season whenever they felt filled with the Christmas spirit.

Deanna brought the boys by my workplace last week to check out my fancy new office. At one point, the twins were simultaneously engaged in some vigorous pounding on my computer keyboard. This seemed like harmless fun until I noticed that in their randomness they were causing various programs, functions and screens to manically appear and disappear. Since that time, my e-mails are all printing in a tiny, almost unreadable size font, a problem that has now stumped our tech person for a 3rd straight workday.

Last night, the boys and I had spinach salads with carrots and cherry tomatoes, and a chicken stir fry with lo mein noodles and vegetables and teriyaki sauce for dinner (kudos, by the way, to my in-laws for generously putting this meal together before leaving after a long day of babysitting. You guys rock!). Anyway, as I sat there watching all three boys cheerily eat it all – broccoli, mushrooms, water chestnuts, etc. - I was pretty proud. Two of them even asked for second helpings of spinach salad for God’s sake. Whether their good eating habits are the result of blind luck, a good example set by Owen (who has always been an unpicky eater), good and consistent parenting, or a combination of all three, I can’t say. What I do know, is that for all the unknowns and guesswork and randomness and uncertainty involved in raising kids - a project which you will not really know if you have done well at until years and years from now, if ever - this little tangible thing made me feel like we are doing at least something right. And yes, I do realize that by writing this, I have jinxed it and am now in for many years of picky eating.

Confessions of a Dork: Holiday Edition

Songs leave such deliciously indelible imprints on us throughout our lives, reminding us of particular moments in time, or as time passes, general eras in our lives, whether happy or sad. They also mean different things to different people. That is why, for instance, while you may cringe and dive for the dial, I will never switch the radio station off of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” but will instead lamely listen to the entire thing for reasons best kept to myself, or why, at your friend’s wedding, you will go charging out to the dance floor in excitement when “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” comes on and I will simply see it as a chance to get another drink.

The imprint songs make on us is even more pronounced at Christmas, a time that I believe most people are more prone than other times of year to romanticize the past. The imprinting of Christmas carols into our brains starts at an early age, as noted in the last post. My family (my Mom excepted), for instance, is unnaturally attached to the Elvis Christmas Album, which my parents had on vinyl and which was a Christmas staple in our household in the Christmases of my youth. Two of my top 5 favorite Christmas songs of this and every year were birthed not in the distant past of my childhood, however, but instead were created in the relatively less-distant year of 1984, where they sat atop the English pop charts at numbers 1 and 2 that year at Christmas of my freshman year of college.

The first is “Do They Know Its Christmas?,” the English 80’s superstar compilation that was the most thrilling musical event of 1984 to my 18-year-old self. You should know, of course, that my 18-year old self wore parachute pants and had dubious judgment, as well as a fervent love of all of the seemingly brilliant music pouring forth from England at the time. Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats and Midge Ure of Ultravox wrote the song in a 24-hour period and 3-days later had gathered a whose who of pop talent of the moment in a London studio as "Band-Aid" for a day long recording session, including Sting, Simon LeBon, Bono, Boy George, George Michael, Paul Young, etc., as well as lesser lights such as Bananarama and Marilyn, who was not invited but showed up anyway. With the profits all going towards Ethiopian famine relief, it was the first in the stream of politically conscious charity songs that later spawned “We Are the World” in America and the Live-Aid concerts. For anyone interested, there is an interesting entry on the recording of the song at Wikipedia. Anyway, despite the sometimes ubiquitous presence of the song, especially that first year and the next one, I have never tired of it and my heart still gives a little jump each time I hear the opening chimes. I still have the 45 of the song given to me for Christmas in 1984 by my friend John (a dedicated reader of this blog!). Curiously, I learned just this week that Deanna had always thought they were egotistically singing in the song that “The greatest gift they’ll get this year is this.” “They,” being of course, the starving people of Ethiopia, and “this” being, I suppose, the record. While it may have been the greatest gift I got in 1984, and while I am sure Ure and Geldof and the rest of the crew they gathered to record the song that long ago day in London all had outsized egos, they were actually singing that the greatest gift the Ethiopians would get that year was life, due to the money raised by sales of the record, and not the record itself.

My more embarrassing 1984 favorite is Wham’s “Last Christmas.” The song, despite its infectious chorus, is numbingly repetitive and checks in at a bloated four and a half minutes. It is the video that left its impression on me, however. It features a brokenhearted George Michael sadly but gamely enduring a Alpine holiday ski-trip with a big group of friends, including his girlfriend from the previous Christmas, who is now dating Andy Ridgley and who has, cruelly, sadistically even, given Andy the brooch that George bestowed upon her the previous year. The video and its bittersweet story of love lost, in addition to setting unrealistic expectations for the kind of holiday get togethers with friends I should expect during my 20’s (never did get that call to meet everyone up at the big lodge in Kitzbuhel, Austria for a bit of skiing and some holiday fun), made such an impression that I still, sadly, make Deanna watch it with me each holiday season (thank god no one reads this blog!). There is much mocking by her of course, but for the most part, she is reluctantly indulgent of this bizarre holiday tradition. Reason enough to love her right there, I say, because frankly, holiday traditions don’t get more dorky than that. I might even buy her a brooch this Christmas.